The dark backstory of 'Mad Max' shows how the world ends

By the time six-time Oscar winner "Mad Max: Fury Road" opens, the
world is dead. The "Mad Max" franchise, beginning with the
1979 original movie, takes place in a desolate Australian
wasteland where cities have been replaced by infinite stretches
of sand. What happened?

The world's oil supplies evaporated, touching off a cataclysmic
global war.Although the "Mad
Max" films don't have a concrete timeline, director George Miller
and the screenwriter for the original film, James
McCausland, have revealed that the films exist in a
universe where the world implodes in the
chaos following complete oil depletion.

George and I wrote the [Mad Max] script based on the thesis that
people would do almost anything to keep vehicles moving and the
assumption that nations would not consider the huge costs of
providing infrastructure for alternative energy until it was too
late.

The original script was written in the shadow of the 1973 oil crisis, which had huge political
and economic effects following an international oil embargo.

"Mad Max" follows this to its extreme conclusion: economic
and societal collapse. In a dark mirror to the 1973 crisis, "Mad
Max" takes place in a world where oil scarcity, instead of
recovering eventually, sets off a chain reaction of war,
destruction, and the nuclear apocalypse.

In this still from the
1979 original film, you can see that the world isn't yet the
barren wasteland seen in "Fury Road."Youtube/Warner Bros.

The opening moments of the second film, "Mad Max 2" —
aka "The Road Warrior" — lays out how everything fell
apart. The narrator recalls a time "When the world was
powered by the black fuel and the deserts spouted great cities of
pipe and steel. Gone now, swept away ... without fuel they were
nothing."

In time, the economic collapse destabilized entire cities.
This touched off a bloody civil war over resources, leaving
only disorganized bands of scavengers willing to kill to survive.

"Their leaders talked and talked and talked, but nothing
could stem the avalanche, their world crumbled, cities exploded,
a whirlwind of looting, a firestorm of fear, men began to
feed on men," the narration of continues.

YouTube/ Warner Bros.

In a key scene during the third film, 1985's "Mad
Max Beyond Thunderdome," Max is told the final part of the
story. In a desperate grab to secure the last
reserves of oil, the world was drawn into a nuclear war
that decimated the remaining natural resources. The world
was dead.

The cave paintings from
the third film detail the nuclear war. Max is depicted in the
cave painting as well.YouTube/Warner
Bros.

When "Fury Road" begins, all known remaining resources
— clean water, functioning vehicles and weapons, and
viable oil — have been hoarded by one man: Immortan Joe. He
leads The Citadel, where he's worshipped as a living
god. Max finds himself wrapped up in the battle to
overthrow him, pursued by Immortan Joe across the
desert wastes that used to be Australia.

Immortan
Joe.Warner Bros./"Mad Max: Fury
Road"

Despite minimal dialogue, the franchise features smart and
insightful social commentary, best summarized by "Fury Road's"
costume designer, Jenny Beavan,during her
Academy Award acceptance speech for best costume
design.

"It could be horribly prophetic, 'Mad Max,' if we're not
kinder to each other, and if we don't stop polluting our
atmosphere, so you know, it could happen," she said.